US Women’s National Team star Carli Lloyd made a daring decision to discuss her stance on the National Anthem on CBS, and to explain why it is wrong to take a knee as an American. After making the choice to stand for the anthem despite the popular social justice trend of kneeling in 2020, Lloyd has been a legend in women’s soccer and in the greater sporting culture.
Lloyd appeared on “Kickin’ it,” a CBS show, and talked about the decision to stand for the anthem and what it means to her to have pride in America. Even with constant pressure from teammates and the media, Lloyd remained adamant that she will stand and respect that flag of the country that gave her and her teammates the greatest life possible.
Starting out, Lloyd explained that she believed many athletes were simply kneeling for the anthem out of need to make a name for themselves and to go along with the crowd. While she is willing to protest for a actionable change, the goal of kneeling for the anthem was far from clear.
She said, “I’m in support of actionable change. I just felt like it was just a thing to do. It was just beginning to feel like a thing to do. It was an empty stadium. I don’t know how many people were watching the game.
“It was 10 seconds before. It wasn’t like our team was wearing coats — it was a global thing that people were doing.In that moment, I just kinda had enough of kneeling right before the game because we did it for a whole year or so leading up.”
After spending most of her season kneeling as a way to avoid controversy, Lloyd was done presenting. She said, “So it wasn’t necessarily a protest per se, but I guess everybody in the English Premier League was taking a knee [before kickoff]. So we had done it every game, and I knew that was going to be my last world championship game. So I wanted to stand. I’d kneeled all the other times, and for me, that was just playing a game.”
Lloyd defended her stance against the anchors who were miffed by her explanation, saying, “Look, I think that there is no perfect nation. There is a lot of things that need to be different. There’s a lot more respect people need to show. I’ve always viewed every single person as a human being, no matter what you look like, no matter who you are, no matter what you represent.
“I think the beautiful thing about our world is we all have different opinions. But I think we’ve gotten to a point where if it’s not a certain opinion, then other people can’t have their other opinions. It’s kinda contradicting itself.”
Featured image credit: By Ampatent – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17080835
